


High School Never Ends

by kiwi_stan



Category: Nancy Drew (TV 2019)
Genre: Other, an underrated form of intimacy?, bonding over the weird things ur old classmates are doing, george and nancy building their friendship a little more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24976042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiwi_stan/pseuds/kiwi_stan
Summary: George and Nancy talk a little more about high school and discover something they have in common.
Relationships: Nancy Drew & George Fan
Kudos: 28





	High School Never Ends

**Author's Note:**

> There's been a little fandom discussion about how we'd like to see George and Nancy talk about high school a little more so I wrote a little thing about it. I'm very rusty when it comes to fic writing and I've never written for this fandom before so hopefully this is okay!

George surveyed the empty Claw with a frown. “Where is everyone?” Now that she was the owner (okay, part-owner) she felt even more responsibility to make sure that the restaurant did well. She hated slow days. 

“Well,” Nancy began. “It’s 2 pm on a Tuesday, and,” She paused and the sound of rain beating hard on the roof was the only sound. “There’s that.” She finished with a small smile. 

Despite the slow day, George had tried to make it productive. She’d sent Bess home early (it wasn’t like she needed the money) and she had Ace and Nancy doing the things that always needed to be done but that never got done, cleaning out the fridge and dusting all the knick-knacks in the dining room respectively. 

“Do you remember the homecoming game junior year?” Nancy asked suddenly. 

“No. I didn’t go.” George hoped that would end the conversation there. That was the type of thing you went to with your friends, and by that point she hadn’t had any. 

School had never really been easy for her. Her mom had never been able to afford all the cool toys that all the cool kids had in elementary school. In middle school, when things like clothes and makeup started to matter, she again hadn’t been able to afford the same nice things that her classmates had. Nancy Drew, with her attorney father, had been George’s polar opposite, and as such they fell on opposite ends of the social ladder. But, George had easily fallen in with the other poor kids (in a town dependent on tourist season like Horseshoe Bay, there were plenty) and she’d had a good amount of friends. 

High school had been a little more complicated. She was already spending big chunks of her time working or chasing after her little sisters, so both her grades and social life took a hit. By that point, she’d recognized her mother’s drinking problem, as had most of the town. But, she still managed to find a friend group, mostly kids with similarly screwy home lives. 

Junior year, just a few weeks before the homecoming game that Nancy had mentioned, was when things had gone from bad to worse. She’d spent the summer working at the Claw, which was where she had met Ryan Hudson. He was older, old-money wealthy, and from out of town. A young, impressionable George who had never left Horseshoe Bay had been drawn to him immediately. 

They’d been so, so careful to keep things private. They both had reasons to protect themselves. But somehow, word still got back to the Queen Bees at Keene High that George Fan had spent the summer hooking up with an older guy. She arrived for the first day of junior year to find pretty much the entire school calling her a slut and speculating about the identity of her hook up. Her one saving grace was that no one knew it was Ryan Hudson. Horseshoe Bay swelled with tourists while school was out, it could be any number of the older guys who summered in town. 

Her few friends shunned her, she sat alone in the cafeteria, and no one wanted to partner up with her for group work. Older, smarter George realized that she’d been manipulated, that slut was an ugly word, and that most of her high school classmates had been stupid and shallow anyway. But at sixteen, being teased and ostracized had seemed like the end of the world. She’d started wearing darker clothes, deciding that if everyone was going to avoid her anyway, she might as well give them a reason to. And she built up a resentment toward the girls who had started this, the clique that Nancy Drew hung out with. 

“You went to the dance, though, right?” 

“No. I was here. Remember?” She wouldn’t have been able to afford a dress and no one would have asked her, so she’d volunteered to work. The Queen Bees had come in with their dates right after the dance and just before closing. She’d spent the evening staring daggers at them from behind the bar, but also secretly feeling a little jealous of their expensive dresses, styled hair, and seemingly perfect relationships. With her red hair, Nancy had stood out, and she’d probably taken the most of George’s glaring. Though she was so busy with her date, she hadn’t noticed. They’d never really been friends, but Nancy had always seemed nice. George had been disappointed to see her fall in with the mean girls, to contribute to the rumor spreading and teasing.

“Oh, that was right after…” Nancy trailed off and was quiet for a few moments. The rain pounded on the roof. 

“Nothing was really the same after that.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“You already apologized and I already forgave you.” George rolled her eyes. They’d gotten past this months ago. She didn’t want to dig up old feelings. 

“I shouldn’t have brought it up. I know it’s not something you like to remember.” Nancy stopped dusting and sat down on top of one of the tables. “If this makes it any better, Helen flunked out of college.” 

“Which one was she?” George had pushed most of the names from her mind the second she got her diploma. 

“Blonde. Cheerleader. The one who-” Nancy caught herself, but George could guess that the rest of her sentence would have been headed. “Always got detention for too much PDA.” Nancy said instead. 

George remembered her. “One of your best friends?” She couldn’t resist a little barb. Thinking about high school brought out a petty side of her. 

“I thought. She totally dropped me once Kate got sick and I was no longer fun, carefree Nancy.” 

George thought back to how alone Nancy had seemed when she’d first started working at the Claw. At the time, she’d thought it was karma. Now that she’d gotten to know Nancy, she just thought it was shitty that all Nancy’s friends had abandoned when she needed it most. “I guess she was pretty horrible, even to her friends.” 

“We weren’t really friends. We hung out. But we never really talked about anything deep. And looking back, she wasn’t always that nice to me.” Neither of them were the outwardly emotional type, or the type to ever actually say anything like this but Nancy smiled at George in a way that said “Us, we’re actually friends”. George smiled back. 

George decided to change the subject, not wanting the emotional moment to linger too long and get weird. “So, she flunked out, huh?” Now that was karma. 

“Yeah. I popped on Facebook for the first time in forever the other day and saw.” 

“What about the other one?” George asked. As a general rule, she didn’t care what her old high school classmates were up to. But, hearing that your former bully had failed was oh so satisfying. 

Nancy smiled, and George got the feeling she knew exactly why she was asking. “Olivia? She’s trying to be an Instagram influencer. She’s not very good at it.” She laughed a little bit and dug her phone out of her apron pocket to show George the poorly edited photos. 

“I never really understood why you were hanging out with them.” George said as she hovered over Nancy’s shoulder and studied Olivia’s Instagram. 

“Really? Why?” Nancy slid her phone back in her apron pocket and turned to face George. 

“They seemed really shallow and bitchy. Nancy, you solved a missing persons case when you were twelve. I thought you were so smart. And you had interests other than lip gloss and boybands. You were way too cool for Helen and Olivia.” George was aware that was probably the most complimentary she’d ever been of Nancy. She hoped it wouldn’t make the moment weird.

Nancy considered it. “They were pretty. And they had nice things. And other people liked them. I guess they just kind of sucked me in. Then once I was in I couldn’t get out.” 

George thought back to first meeting Ryan Hudson. “I know what you mean.” 

“I couldn’t ever talk about solving mysteries with them though. They never would have helped me break into a morgue or summon a sea spirit.” Nancy said with a smile, the same smile from earlier that said she and George were really friends. 

“I also got possessed for you. Don’t forget about that!” 

“Like you’ll ever let me.”

**Author's Note:**

> This didn't have a title when I posted it on tumblr and I forgot Ao3 makes you have one lol. I feel like this works though?


End file.
